Burmese journalist jailed for three months

Bangkok, December 20, 2013--A Burmese journalist was
sentenced to three months in prison on Tuesday on charges of defamation,
trespassing, and "using abusive language," according to local news reports. The
Committee to Protect Journalists strongly condemns the conviction and calls on
the court to reverse the verdict on appeal.

After a one-and-a-half-month trial, the Loikaw Township
Court convicted Ma Khine, a reporter with the Eleven Media Group, under Articles 294, 451 and 500 of the penal
code,according to news reports. She was sentenced to three months for
trespassing, one month for defamation, and one month for using abusive
language. Ma Khine plans to appeal the verdict, according toEleven
Media Group. She will be serving the terms simultaneously in Loikaw Prison in eastern
Kayah State, according to an editor of Eleven Media Group,who
communicated by email with CPJ.

Eleven Media
Group, which includes newspaper, Internet, and TV outlets, said the judgment
against Ma Khine could have been politically motivated because of the recent
critical commentary by its newspaper, Eleven Daily, about widespread
corruption in the judiciary.

"We call for the verdict against journalist Ma Khine to be
scrapped on appeal," said Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia
representative. "The jailing of a journalist on questionable charges shows just
how far Burma still needs to go in reforming and scrapping laws that are often
used to suppress the media."

The charges against Ma Khine were filed by Aye Aye Phyo, a
lawyer, and the lawyer's father, Aung Shein, who claimed that on October 27,
2013, the journalist forcibly entered their home to interview the lawyer about a case.
They said she used abusive language and defamed them when she was asked to
leave their private residence.

But Ma Khine said in her court testimony that she was
invited into their home and that she had identified herself as a journalist.
She said she was asked to leave after Aye Aye Pho reacted angrily to a question
about how much she charged in legal fees for handling a case.

The case, in which Aye Aye Pho represented the plaintiff,
was a legal dispute between a local movie distributor and a movie rental shop
owner over the distribution of pirated movies, according to local
reports.

Burma's previous military regime regularly jailed journalists
on vague and arbitrary national security-related laws that remain on the books.
Ma Khine represents the first Burmese reporter to be imprisoned since President
Thein Sein released 14 jailed journalists in a 2012 presidential pardon,
according to CPJ research.